Seven Deadly Sins
by Seyyed
Summary: David/Griffin SLASH. Seven parts, each centering around one of the seven deadly sins. Ratings change between parts - so the M overall rating is just for safety's sake.
1. ENVY

FIRST IN A SERIES OF SEVEN: ENVY

Rating: T for some language

Disclaimer: Not mine. Sadly and depressingly.

Summary: Millie Harris was everything he could never, ever be. Not even if he tried.

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He hated her.

No questions to be asked, no second thoughts. He hated Millie Harris – little miss thing, queen bitch of David's world. In his eyes she could do no wrong.

She was perfect.

Perfect hair, long and dark and soft and sweet, clean and something worth running your fingers through. Perfect skin, warm and flawless, not a line out of place, not a scar or disfiguration to be seen no matter where you looked. Perfect body; she fit David like a glove, tucked against his side like she belonged there. Perfect smile. Perfect teeth. Perfect eyes. Perfect, perfect, perfect, per-fucking-fect!

Millie Harris was everything he could never, ever be. Not even if he tried.

His hair was coarse and filthy, filled with the dirt and grit of a hundred different places all across the world. His skin was marred, flawed, used and scarred, damaged deep from cuts he never expected to fully heal. He was short, but still too tall; he didn't fit beside David. His shoulders were too broad, his body too flat and solid – his hips and waist and chest didn't yield like Millie's. Didn't cushion or give under David's hands.

Millie was beautiful. He knew he wasn't ugly, but he was no striking looker. He was ordinary, average-Joe, maybe handsome if you caught him on a good day, but he wasn't beautiful.

Millie was patient – stupid as all hell in his opinion, but patient. He lost his temper a million times a day in a billion different ways for a trillion different reasons that sometimes he didn't even understand after the fact. He cussed and growled and fought and bit and clawed his way through every minute of every day.

Millie frowned and David tripped all over himself to turn it back into a smile. He frowned and David looked at him like he was five or got annoyed, hardly ever tried to butter up a situation with him like he did for Millie – not that he wanted David to play that kind of game with him. The fact of the matter was that he knew David wouldn't, even if he wanted him to.

Millie had been David's world since forever. He was pretty sure that if he wasn't a jumper, someone like David in ways no one else in the world the brunet had ever met was, David wouldn't even bother with him. If he hadn't followed the asshole to Rome like he had the two of them never would have even met. David was caught up with a woman in that bar, a Millie replacement, not him. David didn't even see him.

Millie was a girl. He was a boy. And of all the things that Millie was or had or did that was the one thing she could keep for herself and he wouldn't care. He didn't want to be a girl. He wouldn't know the first thing about being one even if he did. But he hated her for being one. Hated her because she was a girl and he wasn't and he would never be anything but a possible second best to David because of it. She won by default and he had always been a sore loser.

David loved her. Part of him didn't care that Millie Harris held the key to David Rice's heart. Part of him didn't want to be at he center of David's entire fucking universe. Part of him was glad that he wasn't. But another part of him, the part that bristled whenever he heard Millie's name or caught a whiff of that sugar and spice smell of her on David's clothes, the part that had been more then ok with setting off a bomb in her apartment while she was still trapped there wanted to tear her apart for being so God damn important and influential in David's life. That part of him, the dangerous part that hated every breath she took wanted David's heart for himself and no one else.

As much as he hated Millie Harris, as stupid and worthless as he thought she was, whenever he saw her and David together – when he heard the way he said her name or caught the look that crossed his face at the thought of her – more then he hated her, he wished he could _be_ her.


	2. WRATH

SECOND IN A SERIES OF SEVEN: WRATH

Rating: perhaps an R?

Disclaimer: Not mine. Sadly and depressingly.

Summary: The fact that Griffin can still smell her only makes things worse.

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Violence is never the answer. Use words, not fists. Talk it out. Solve your problems, work them out, don't bruise them. Or at least that's what they say – whoever the hell 'they' are. But sometimes, a lot of times by Griffin's book, they're wrong. Sometimes words don't work, especially if you don't really know how to use them. Sometimes violence is the only way to make your point. Sometimes it's the only answer – doesn't always mean it's the right answer, but when it's the only one you know right and wrong really don't even matter.

Was it right to greet David with a hard right hook in the jaw? No, probably not.

Does Griffin care? No, not at all.

He's pissed, shaking with the force of it. Seeing red rather then skin and dark hair. He watches through a film as David turns back from the blow, hand grasping at the pulsing, tender flesh that will be bruised ugly against his tan skin by morning. The shock that hasn't had the time to become anger on the taller jumper's face doesn't even register; he's already shoving David back by the chest into the makeshift table, the command center, and watching him tumble over it with hands out and grasping for anything to steady himself with.

Papers fly and something made of glass shatters as it hits the ground at David's feet.

David says something then, loud and demanding, but Griffin can't hear him over the sound of his own raging pulse in his ears. He's almost a whole head shorter then David, but that doesn't stop him from getting right up in his face and shoveling his fist into the brunet's stomach. David sucks in a breath, chokes when he can't, and then his arms are up defensively between him and Griffin and he's trying to breath and fend the blond off at the same time. Limbs twist to breaking as they hit and block and kick and bite, nails digging where they can, bodies falling over loose items, furniture and each other. The battle never leaves the four walls of the lair, neither even try to jump; this has been a long time in coming and both of them know it.

The fact that Griffin can smell her still, over the sweat and lacing the copper taste of the blood in his mouth from the split lip David just gave him, only makes things worse. He hits David so hard something at the back of his mind reels and screams at him as he watches the other jumper stagger back and hit the floor. But he's not far behind him and he doesn't stop to check that the other is alright – already knows in his gut that he is – as his knees hit the ground and ache in protest. He already has the other's hands pinned above his head and his jeans worked down to his knees before David's eyes stop swimming and can focus on his face again.

The fight that erupts is as bad as the first, maybe worse, but Griffin never looses the upper hand and David stays down on his back beneath him. David is strong enough to break free and Griffin knows it, they both know it. David could just jump, could throw Griffin off of him, he could probably beat the living shit out of him if he tried hard enough, if he wanted to bad enough, but he doesn't and Griffin thinks that's the thing to focus on. Not the fighting, not the right and not the wrong, but the what should be and isn't. The what shouldn't be and is. That's the important part and Griffin doesn't miss it – he clings to it and blots out the smell of her with it. He breaths it in as he shovels in and ruts and grinds and takes. He feels it in the bite David takes at his jaw and the press of thighs flanking his waist.


	3. PRIDE

THIRD IN A SERIES OF SEVEN: PRIDE

Rating: hard T, maybe a soft R?

Disclaimer: Not mine. Sadly and depressingly.

Summary: It didn't happen.

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He didn't say a word about it and David never brought it up.

Bruises and cuts healed and in two weeks it was as if they'd never fought at all – if anyone asked, it never happened. Griffin never lost it, they never beat the shit out of each other, he never knocked David to the ground and fucked him through it, and David never let him. It didn't happen. It had been a bad dream, a perverse fantasy, and the burning mark of teeth on Griffin's jaw was his imagination. He hadn't woken up, pants gone and shirt twisted on his torso, body pressed to the other jumper's and limbs deliciously sore from passing out cold on the floor. He hadn't had his arms around David, chest to his back and face lost in the short hair at the nape of his neck.

He didn't freak over a stupid little girl like Millie Harris, didn't finally snap over her. He was above that. He was better then that. He was stronger and smarter and just _better_ then that! Better then Millie! Better then David! He was so much more then the panic he'd felt welling up in his chest when David jumped into his lair, skin warm and soft mouth smiling, knowing he'd just come from seeing Millie. So far above the frustration and desperation he'd fueled every punch and kick dealt to David with.

So it didn't happen.

Cause if it had happened… that meant Griffin wasn't everything he thought he was. If the heartache and gut-wrenching pain felt when he'd seen David happy and alive because of his time spent with Millie had been real, if the panic that had set him off had been real, then he wasn't as strong as he thought. If he'd really forced them into a skin breaking, blood-spilling battle of fists and teeth then he wasn't as smart as he thought. If he'd actually put David down, pinned him to the floor and reduced them both to a couple of grunting, thrusting animals in the middle of the floor and he was a whole hell of a lot stupider then he ever thought he could be.

So it didn't happen. He couldn't let it have happened.

Cause if it happened then that meant David had let it. It meant the brunet had fought for show, had fought because those were the rules, but in the end had been the one to let it happen. And that… that could be the one reason for Griffin to have let it. If David had let it happen, had wanted it to happen, then that could be enough for Griffin to give in and admit he was weak and stupid for David Rice. Griffin could confess to have spent a night on the floor between another man's thighs, buried in deep and straining for deeper, breathing hard and moaning out loud. He could acknowledge that the burn on his jaw was a bite mark, show it off openly as something he'd gotten from David that he's never seen on Millie. He could admit to losing all control.

Except that he couldn't.

David had been with Millie first that day. He'd spent the day with her and came back grinning like a love-struck fool, smelling like her and thinking about her. Millie had been first and Griffin didn't do sloppy seconds. He was second best for no one, to no one. He was better then that and he was stronger and smarter.

So it didn't happen and it never would.


	4. GLUTTONY

FOURTH IN A SERIES OF SEVEN: GLUTTONY

Rating: G

Disclaimer: Not mine. Sadly and depressingly.

Summary: David eats a lot when he's nervous.

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David eats a lot when he's nervous. It's something Griffin has picked up on over the months they've spent on and off in each other's company. Today he showed up with a box of pizza and a triple scoop cone of gelato from Italy – David ate the frozen treat first, offered two slices of the pizza to Griffin and then ate the rest himself. Then he found a cup of Maruchan noodles and a half eaten bag of Doritos Griffin didn't even know he had; both joined the pizza and gelato in the pits of David's bottomless stomach.

In an hour David was complaining about being hungry again and Griffin snapped off a comment about tapeworms that the brunet only rolled his eyes over. The blond wasn't surprised by the other's eating habits anymore; David had been munching and snacking and eating left and right like this for a week now – as much as the man consumed in a day, Griffin had to wonder where it all went. David was still tall, trim, sensual David, and didn't appear to be putting on a pound of the weight he sound have been.

Whatever the hell was wrong with the man, it must be pretty bad to work him into a nervous eating tizzy like this one. He spent all of his time eating here in the lair nowadays; he never seemed to go home and Griffin hadn't heard a word about Millie in ages. Not that he was complaining about that.

David came to him with cartons of Chinese, bentos of Japanese, pizzas, soups, pasta, sandwiches of all various types and sizes, ice cream, cookies, cake and pie, things filled with crème or jelly or both, things with nuts, hard candy, taffy and gum, chips, crackers, snack packs and the rare cupcake or two from time to time. They had tacos, Thai noodles, tofu, chicken, beef, pork, lamb, every piece of fruit and vegetable known to man, hamburgers, hotdogs, and easy mac straight from a microwave Griffin didn't have, and Griffin couldn't recall eating more then maybe a quarter of all of this with the other man. Sometimes all of this was consumed back to back. Most of the time it was him at his command center bent over papers and charts or curled up in his armchair with a game control and David hovering in the background crunching and munching and swallowing down what the hell ever piece of food he had with him at the time.

Griffin caught himself frowning at the other jumper from time to time, watching him pack something else away with a sort of unease he didn't think eating could put in a person. Sometimes he'd go as far as to say he felt a knot of concern tie itself around his lungs. This couldn't be healthy. But he didn't know what to say to the other man, words weren't his forte and even if they were he didn't know what the hell was wrong and really didn't want to have to ask. He had a feeling he wouldn't like the answer.

So David ate away at the Sauerkraut and mustard smothered sausage he'd brought with him this time and Griffin kept his eyes on the torn and smudged chart he had out on the table before him. The blond didn't say a word. He didn't snap or snark or spit out a comment about tapeworms or eating disorders like he usually did and he didn't turn and ask the man point blank what the hell was wrong with him like he wanted to do. He just sat there, silent, not sure what he was looking for in those charts but looking nonetheless and started a little when he felt another's hand on the back of his neck. He thought about swinging out and back, fighting off the grip on his neck, except that it wasn't a grip. Someone wasn't grabbing him, nails digging in and wrenching him back from the table and chair; the hand was just resting there, palm wide and fingers long, warm and just touching. He knew that hand, as embarrassing as it was for him to admit it. He could probably recognize it in the dark.

He recognized the nervous tension in the wrist too, the clammy heat that teetered back and forth on the brink of sweating in the palm and pads of the fingers. The pads pressed in as the hand slid up enough to pull curiously at his hair, exploring the base of his skull, and he still hadn't moved – he still sat, slouched over the table with his eyes on the chart and his heart hammering like nobody's business in his chest and his mouth gone dry, and his mind shut off, overworked and pulsing like a headache at his temple. Fingers drifted down, past his ear and to his jaw where the touched and pressed at a point that had once been bruised and raw from teeth – the mark had long since healed and disappeared, but David's fingers pressed and touched at Griffin's jaw like he could still see it. Griffin thought maybe he still could.

And all at once he knew what was wrong with David, knew why the man was suddenly so nervous and upset and eating all of the time. He knew what was wrong, because it was the same thing that was wrong with him.


	5. SLOTH

FIFTH IN A SERIES OF SEVEN: SLOTH

Rating: G

Disclaimer: Not mine. Sadly and depressingly.

Summary: Anger, he can deal with. Violence, he can understand.

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Griffin goes far out of his way to make you feel like a damn fool. He'll be cold and callous and totally indifferent to anything that happens in your life simply because he can and knows it will upset you. He does it because he knows it will upset him; upset David. He shows his ass best when David tries to talk to him, tonguing at a piece of food stuck in his teeth and eyes searching the blond's back in hopes he'll turn around – he never does. The best he can get out of the shorter jumper is a bit off snark about this or that, something stupid about tapeworms. Griffin will smart off about Paladins, explain in excruciating detail what he'd like to do with Roland if he ever got his hands on him, but the second David opens his mouth about something a little closer to them then Paladins and a war they hadn't heard heads or tails of in a month Griffin closes off.

Total lock down.

He'll be silent and apathetic to everything for a week. He might not even leave his armchair, eyes glued to the little screen and fingers dancing the familiar, by now memorized steps of the controller. David thinks if he didn't show up everyday to drop a carton of special fried rice or poorly wrapped sandwich in his lap, Griffin would probably starve.

He does this when he's nervous. David is pretty sure he's experienced the lazy, careless indifference enough times now to see it for what it really is – a barrier. A wall. Something Griffin can hide behind when he looses his footing. Like his temper and rage, Griffin masks vulnerability with detachment, shuts off the passion David sometimes sees sparking in his eyes when he talks about the things he loves: video games, fast cars, and fighting. He makes himself not care, squashes down any natural sense of emotion just to throw someone off the trail. If he upsets someone enough, makes them believe he really couldn't give a rats ass about anything to do with them or life at all, then eventually they'll turn the focus off whatever it was that set off those warning bells to begin with and move on to something he can actually handle – like maybe a fight or shouting. Anger, he can deal with. Violence, he can understand.

A soft touch to the back of his neck is something he can't handle – his back and shoulders tense with the automatic reflex and natural instinct in him to fight. Gentle is something he doesn't understand – he sits still and silent, no comment or bite at the ready. It makes him vulnerable and David can feel him shutting down even as he presses in a finger against the ghost of a bite mark high on his jaw, reminding Griffin that there really is no hiding from the truth.

Another total lock down.

David can stand here behind him for hours, hands touching and feeling the raised line of old scars, smoothing down the wild mop of sandstorm-dry hair, and Griffin will never say a single word. Even after David stops, Griffin will probably sit right where he is at his desk, slouched over a chart, silent and unmoving as a dead man for a week. But it isn't something they can stop; David will always push for answers, back the blond into a corner with a question he can't handle, and Griffin will always build a wall between them.


	6. GREED

SIXTH IN A SERIES OF SEVEN: GREED

Rating: hard T, soft R?

Disclaimer: Not mine. Sadly and depressingly.

Summary: What good were they if David stopped asking questions and Griffin started answering them?

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David saw Millie today.

After weeks spent fudging around in the lair for hours with him he'd finally had enough and went somewhere else. Not that Griffin could really blame him, even though he wanted to – he hadn't been all that entertaining as of late. When David was here things got quiet. He stopped talking, stopped interacting. They spent most of the time on separate sides of the room; David playing a game and Griffin obsessing over his charts or Griffin gaming and David floating here and there, eating, reading a magazine or newspaper he found on the floor somewhere. Not much was said anymore and he supposed that was largely his own fault – now and then he'd hear David say something, not so much hearing the words as just recognizing the warm vibration of his voice in the air, and he wouldn't respond.

David would sigh – that heavy sound he always made when Griffin was being difficult. That sound he made when he was disappointed. It was the same sound he'd made the other day when he'd started running a hand over and through Griffin's hair and across the back of his neck, out of the blue, and the blond hadn't said a word – hadn't responded very much at all to him. He was making that sound a lot lately.

David would sigh and then he would leave. And yesterday he said he wouldn't be over today – he was spending the day with Millie.

It probably wasn't meant as something to intentionally piss Griffin the hell off, but it did. He'd been two seconds from jumping after David when he'd left to beat some sense back into his thick, beautiful skull. But catching himself thinking of David as beautiful stopped him. The jealousy that turned his insides to molten bile made him slam back down into his armchair with a snarl and vicious kick to his game controller; it jolted the dock and almost sent the television to the ground, but he didn't care.

He spent the entire evening and the better part of the next day obsessing not over his pictures and charts or Paladins, Roland or video games, but over David. Over Millie. Over David and Millie. Together. Together right then at that moment doing God knew what while he was alone and scowling at the wall or at the sand dunes that stretched out farther then he could see. He imagined David taking her out for lunch, a movie, a walk around a park, to a fair, a bar, to dinner, and then to bed. David's bed.

A new bed in a new home Griffin had never seen.

He imagined David's hands, wide and warm, undressing her and touching her, following the lines of her perfect skin with the gentle curiosity he treated everything with. He imagined David smiling, talking sweet to her and making her promises, the two of them making plans. He imagined the face David would make, the soft gasp of surprise and pleasure, when he took her. He'd go slow with her, Griffin knew, he'd take his time and show how much he cared with every move and sound and kiss and touch, because that was the way David was. And afterwards, he'd tell her how beautiful she was and how much he loved her in everyway a man can tell a woman. They'd go to sleep together and they'd wake up together.

Griffin imagined how pretty they'd look together – beautiful, flawless Millie and sweet, beautiful David. The blond grimaced in disgust at the perfect image the two would make. But it wasn't even perfect! Not really. Only to the eye were they so great together, but honestly David and Millie were nothing alike! She didn't understand him, no even a little bit – she saw what he was and loved the excitement of what he could do. She'd been terrified and repulsed by it at first, Griffin remembered, only changing her mind now because she'd opened her eyes enough to see the possibilities. She could go anywhere in the world with David, he'd take her anywhere so long as she kept him tight around her finger, and she'd never be without because he'd give her anything. So long as she had him tight around her finger. This was a game to her, something clever and useful. She didn't understand him at all.

Griffin knew. Griffin understood. Griffin had the scars to prove just how much he fucking understood. He and David were the same, they shared this thing in a way Millie would never share anything with David. To the eye they were horrible together – he and David fought constantly, they clashed over every little thing, and there was no such thing as healthy communication between them. But they were the same.

David was his in a way he'd never be Millie's. David came to him all the time no matter where he went. Griffin knew he could pick up right now and head out to some far corner of the globe without a word or notice and in a matter of days, maybe even hours, David would find him. He'd be frowning and huffing that exasperated sigh of his and rolling those soulful eyes, soft mouth snapping off something about Griffin being an asshole and demanding answers in that God awful annoying way he always did. And they would fight. Maybe only verbally, but they would fight and in the end someone would storm off angry – if it was Griffin, David would follow him. If it was David, Griffin would go back to the lair, the familiar one David knew, and David would be there waiting.

He and David were drawn together. They were jumpers, someone who knew and understood what the other was and what that meant. Millie would never be a jumper. Mille would never understand like Griffin already did.

A smirk pulled at the blond's lips as he thought about David leaving Millie in the morning. He'd leave Millie and come here to him, like he always did, and wouldn't that just be a kick in the shorts for Millie? He wondered what she'd say if she knew David always came back here to Griffin now matter how many times he went to bed there with her. And when he got here… Griffin still wasn't going to talk. It just wasn't how they worked.

They wouldn't be David and Griffin, Griffin and David, if they sat down and talked out every little feeling they had. They wouldn't be them if they didn't fight and scream and kick and bite every once and a while, try to tear each other apart just to get a point across. What good were they if David stopped asking questions and Griffin started answering them?

Instead, when David got here Griffin was going to show him just how stupid he was being by spending the day, any day, with Millie. How stupid he was for sharing the night with her too. He would stake his claim like Millie never could – he'd bite and tongue at every inch of the taller man, leave a mark in every place Griffin's own body held a scar. He'd bruise and break skin, because he understood. He'd take and have and pull and push because it was his and he wouldn't just stop at the end, he wouldn't whisper beautiful words because they weren't. He wouldn't stop until David was as aware of their place together as he was, until he fucking forgot how to spell Millie, let alone know who she was.

Until David understood as clearly as he did that he was Griffin's, and Griffin wasn't sharing anymore.


	7. LUST

SEVENTH IN A SERIES OF SEVEN: LUST

Rating: R

Disclaimer: Not mine. Sadly and depressingly.

Summary: The blond has had to fight for everything his entire life. One kiss isn't going to be enough to change that.

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Thinking back, Griffin is almost tempted to believe that David already knew when he got there. The way his greeting trailed off at the end and his eyes lingered in on his face a moment too long before it skittered off into a far corner, like he was shy or something, should have clued Griffin in to the brunet's understanding of the situation a lot sooner then it did. It was sometime between late afternoon and early evening when David decided to make an appearance, jumping in, popping in at the corner of Griffin's eye with a flash and rustle of air – probably fresh from his place if the still shower damp hair had been anything to go by. The simple, ready to be removed clothing choice for that night's visit, simple dark tee and jeans, no belt and no usual slim fit jacket, should have been another little hint to Griffin that David was more then aware of what his visit that night might lead to. But at the time the thought hadn't even crossed his mind… ok, maybe it crossed his mind, but he hadn't dared to entertain the thought of it actually happening.

Not again.

"How's Minnie?" Griffin snarked from his place across the room, head tilted to the side to keep an eye on David.

"Millie. And she'd fine," David answered even though he knows Griffin wasn't really asking. Griffin couldn't care less about Millie or her wellbeing; the question was just an icebreaker of sorts, giving David an invitation to stay a little while without so many words.

"Yah, I bet she is…" the blond grouses, muttering sourly under his breath. He was sure Millie was just great, jolly good even after a whole day and night spent with David. The bitch.

David caught the implication, had the decency to smirk about the blond's tone – sour, jealous tone - but he didn't say anything about it, knew better then to call the blond on it. Nothing good could ever come from calling Griffin jealous, even though it was obvious he was - stubborn and jealous and irritatingly so. He opted instead to make his way over to the desk the other jumper was still slumped over, just like he had left him, pleased just to hear him talking again. "What are you doing?"

"Christ, I'm solving world fucking hunger," Griffin snapped. "What the bloody hell do yah think I'm doin'?" He thrust his hands up at the papers and pictures pinned to the walls, Paladin stuff, and the charts on his desk, rolling his eyes at David like the brunet was the stupidest, most oblivious dumb ass in the entire world.

"Yeah, but what for?

Griffin's brow furrowed tenfold at that, not of anger, but genuine confusion, "What do yah mean what for? For the same damn reason I always have! Roland -!"

"Hasn't been spotted anywhere near you or me for a month," David interrupted, tone kind of like he was explaining to a volatile little kid why he'd lied to him about Santa Clause and the Easter Bunny. David was leaning against the side of the table, head up and eyes on the obsessive notes and drawings and pictures of Roland and Paladins taped and pinned and stapled to the wall – a poor, crazy jumper's wallpaper. He shrugged his shoulders; "…we haven't had a run in with a Paladin since that time before with Millie."

"So yah think that little show ah 'kindness' ah yours just, what? Changed Roland's mind completely?" Griffin scowled, "Think he had a change ah heart or some shit and is gonna put in for a career change?"

He could smell David. At this close range he could smell the shower clean, natural scent of him – warm, spiced bar of soap smell. The kind that made his mouth tingle, his tongue numb at the edges like he'd eaten something teetering on edge of being too hot. He wanted to reach out and taste him, bite at the clean, tanned skin and breathe in the smell of him. He wanted to get high off David, inhale till his head swam and he passed out. He wanted to get drunk off him, swallow down the spice on his skin till he toppled over, dumb and incoherent. The want of it burned like poison in his veins, cooking his pulse and going to work at turning his brain to mush.

They were dangerous thoughts, but so damn nice to think about. Thoughts of Millie's hands touching that skin turned his breath to fire, scorched his lungs, and he wanted nothing more then to smudge out and cover over every place her slim little palm might have slide over David's chest and back and shoulders with prints of his own. Complete ownership, marks livid and clear, so that the next time David saw her – and Griffin knew he would – Millie would reach out and stop, see the marks like they were his name branded deep in huge fucking letters into the skin and recoil. Know she had no right. Know that if she touched, she'd be touching someone else's property. He's property. Griffin's property, not Millie's, and there was no way in hell she could ever be Griffin – more so then he could never be Millie, she could never be him.

She didn't have a stupid-ass snowball's chance in hell to even resemble him. He could learn to be a little like her, learn a little patience and maybe a little care, but she couldn't learn to be anything like him. There was no 'How To…' guide, no art to or class she could take. She'd never be a jumper. Griffin took pride in that knowledge. And he hopped to God, if there was such a thing anymore, that all his desires didn't as plainly and clear as day on his face like he felt they were. Having David know the kind of power he had over him, the ability to throw him so far out of control that Griffin sometimes didn't think he'd ever find a way to be in it again, couldn't ever be a good thing for him.

Could it?

David shrugged again, slowly, eyes still studying the wall, "It could happen."

The brunet's eyes only left the wall when Griffin stood up, sudden and hard enough to make the legs of his chair screech long and angry on the floor before it fell over on it's back behind the blond. He braced himself instinctually; sure his optimism of the Paladin/Roland situation had gone and pissed the shorter jumper off again, but the flair he saw in those green eyes was a heat of another kind. A kind that made David's throat close and mouth go dry.

"Yah don't know shit," Griffin growled, a knot in his chest tightening as he forced his way up in David's face. God the guy smelled so good.

David, to his credit, didn't so much as flinch an inch as Griffin cornered him. He remained tall and still, calm, chin tucking down closer to his chest to look down at the blond, eyes on his and seeing a lot more then he was sure Griffin wanted him to see. It was hard not to notice, the tumble and fierce mix of emotions battling it out like a life or death struggle in the iris, sharpening the dark edges of the pupil – it must have been maddening for the blond to keep all those extremes and passions locked up, caged like they were. David wondered what was so wrong with just letting them loose every once in a while? Would it really damage Griffin so badly? Sure, it might be awkward, embarrassing, but the relief of having it out and shared between two people rather then just one… that kind of relief had to be worth it.

"I know something…"

"Yah _don't_ know _shit_." Each word was spoken so hard and with so much conviction David almost thought he'd hammered each one into his stomach with his fist – it left the brunet winded and staring.

What were they even talking about anymore? Paladins? Roland? Maybe at first, but it didn't sound like it anymore to David. This was one of those closer to home sort of things, the kind of discussions the brunet knew he had to tread into carefully – one wrong word could send Griffin into one of his total lock downs, turn him mute for a week and all this build up he could feel pulsing between them would have been for nothing.

"Griffin…" David swallowed, almost afraid his hand might be hacked off as he reached between them to press it, heavy and hopefully grounding, against Griffin's waist. The way the blond's eyes contracted, narrowed on his face and his snarling mouth pulled tight in response to the touch made David tighten his fingers immediately, as if in anticipation of the blond fleeing the situation. He dropped his shoulders, leveling his face with the blond's and nodding slowly, expression as placid and open as he could make it, "I know. It's alright."

Griffin apparently didn't need anymore incentive then that. He's got a hand up in David's short hair faster then the brunet thought a person could move, yanking his head down that much farther, hard like he has to fight for it, and is crushing their lips together. David opens his mouth to him easily, tries to slow Griffin down and show him there's no need to fight him – he isn't pushing away. But Griffin doesn't understand that; the blond has had to fight for everything his entire life. One kiss isn't going to be enough to change that. He's shoving David back against the wall, hands off his hair and instead fisting in the collar of his shirt, pushing and pulling like he can't make up his mind, licking hard and deep into David's mouth and clashing their teeth together almost to the point of painful. And David just kept trying to sooth him, lets Griffin rough him up a bit while his hands press slow and easy up the blond's back to the sharp bones of his shoulder blades. He takes a breath from David's mouth, robbing the brunet's lungs like he's afraid David will break him off and disappear if he pulls too far back for air. David figures it's a legitimate fear all things considered, but he also finds it more then a little bit sad.

"Hey…" He braces his hands on either side of Griffin's head, holds him back just enough to be able to look at him properly and has to fight a little against the struggle Griffin puts up to knock his hands loose. "Hey," he thickens his voice, stern enough to grab the blond's attention and stares when Griffin looks back, shakes his head a little, "…don't."

Griffin frowns, doesn't understand and knocks away one of David's hands only to have it back up and holding onto his face again a second later. He curses, loud and mad. But David's got a hand moving further back into his hair, combing through the wild blond strands close to Griffin's neck and the other is wrapping around the shorter man's wrist, warm and grip loose enough that Griffin could easily break it if he wanted to – so he doesn't. The taller jumper's pulling him forward by the nape of his neck, mouth hot and lips soft when they press against his forehead and Griffin swallows hard, tense and uncomprehending as David's hand draws his down low on the brunet's stomach and presses his palm up beneath his shirt, holding his hand there against the warm, smooth skin and Griffin's tightens reflexively.

"This isn't a fight," David says somewhere close to Griffin's ear. "Don't make it one."

And for once in his life, Griffin obeys someone other then himself.

They've got the button of David's jeans popped open and his shirt off, two sets of hands working Griffin's up over his head, by the time they hit the bed – a covered mattress with sheets that have never been made. David's propped up on his elbows beneath the blond, Griffin's knee pressed up high between his long legs, watching as the blond takes to devouring the skin on his stomach and up to his chest; licking and biting and tasting like he's been starved his entire life, tortured and in want of nothing else but David for years. He doesn't question Griffin's place above him, knows a heck of a lot better then to try and get the upper hand, push Griffin on his back – the blond would react like a cornered beast if David did that, thrashing and clawing and right back to the desperate fighting the brunet had only just barely begun to break him of. The time before had been a fight all the way through, something impersonal and done out of anger that neither of them wanted to remember so much afterward – David was hell bent on making it different this time and when Griffin's back up from his chest, David bites at his lip and swallows the faint groan the blond answers with.

His hands skim down over scars and smooth skin and start working at the front of the other jumper's jeans. The catch in Griffin's chest as much a surprise to David as it is to the blond when his hand ventures down into the hidden space between body and denim, fingers fisting curiously around hard, hot flesh. Griffin's head falls forward onto David's shoulder, face pressed tight against his neck and jaw working around a hoarse gasp as his hips roll forward. They rock each other, David's hand trapped between them as Griffin fits their hips together – jeans eventually getting in the way, pushed down and away between wet kisses and grabbing hands and David's legs end up shouldered over pale, scarred shoulders. Push and pull, splintered chokes and groans bit back, jerking hips and Griffin's hands holding David's down hard enough to bruise.

It lasts forever and ends much too soon, both left hardly breathing and Griffin shaking out of his skin to the point David is almost afraid the blond actually might. He combs his fingers through damp blond hair, shifts the heavy, shaking body to one side and presses their foreheads together – David's nose against Griffin's cheek – and holds the man together in his skin with long arms wound tight around his chest and hands pressed securely to his back. He knows in the morning Griffin will pull away and disappear into his head for a long while, maybe even go mute like usual for a week – that's just Griffin's way, that's how he deals, and as annoying and frustrating as it can get, David knows it wont last. It never does.


End file.
